Madapple

by Christina Meldrum

  Jimsonweed is related to nightshade; they are in the same family, Solanaceae. I wonder if Mother plans to eat some bittersweet berries to see if they can do for her what the jimsonweed does while she waits for the jimsonweed to dry. I want to tell her not to bother, that the green berries give little: some momentary pleasure, yes; some nausea if one eats too many. But I can’t tell Mother this. She’d forbidden my eating the unripe nightshade.

  We strip the branches of their remaining fruit. Our swell of berries stains the sapientia basket, opposite the jimsonweed Mother’s pushed to one side. Many of the berries are compressed to green jelly.

  “We’re done here,” Mother says, nudging me off the log.

  I step down, reach back to assist her. She lifts one hand toward me; the pulp clings to her fingers like moss. I take her hand in mine and ease her down, and when I pull back my hand, the jelly strings between us.

  “Have a taste, Aslaug Datter.” Mother’s arm remains stretched outward, her hand propped near me. I’m surprised she has energy to goad me. Her skin looks petal-thin, her feral eyes hollow. Still, I have the impulse to take her fingers in my mouth, shock her. Instead, I kneel to the ground and wipe my hands along the grass in two slick swipes. Then I stand and help Mother squat; I place her hands on the grass.

  “Are you afraid tasting the berries might counter all the spells you’ve been putting on me?” Mother says.

  I slide her still-curled hands along the ground. “You don’t believe in witchcraft.”

  “That’s never deterred you.” Mother wiggles her hands from mine and attempts to wipe off the nightshade pulp herself, but she has difficulty flattening out her fingers and much of the pulp stays put. She motions for me to help her stand. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten even this?” she says. “Bittersweet nightshade counteracts witchcraft.”

  “If only I did know witchcraft,” I want to say. “Then I’d become a butterfly soul, find myself a new mother.”

  By the time we reach home, the mosquitoes circle. And stars show in the sky. Like seeds, I think, each star holding the possibility of life. I know I’m looking into the past when I look at the stars—that I’m seeing the universe as it existed years and years ago. I can’t help but wish I could see into my past, into Mother’s past. Into my father’s life. I wish I could find a context for who I am.

  We pass by our neighbor’s house. He sits in the window that faces our yard watching us. His hands grip the wheels of his chair, his glasses sit askew and his few longish hairs dangle over his ear, having slipped free of his glossy scalp.

  “Perverted old coot,” Mother says when she sees him there, and she spits, at him or the ground, I can’t tell. Then she smacks the deep vale of her collarbone, and the flattened mosquito sticks there, in the vale. “The old coot was waiting for us again. En skefuld lort. Spoonful of shit.” But she says this with less ire than usual, it seems. Less contempt. Still, she glares at him.

  She’ll try to stare him down, I think. I take the opportunity to lower my baskets, lift a cluster of meadowsweet from the ground, drop the flowers onto the disheveled heap of plants.

  Mother turns, sees me, and I see the mosquito hangs in a sketchy pool of red. “Why are you picking those?” she says. “You’ve got the runs?”

  So like Mother to nearly rip my hair from my skull, then worry I have diarrhea. “Yes,” I lie, but I speak to the abundance of meadowsweet stamens, not Mother. I lift the baskets from the ground, start walking.

  “Wait,” she says, and she drags herself and her sapientia to me. She presses her scaly palm against my cheek. “You’re feverish,” she says. “You feel feverish, Aslaug.”

  “I’m just hot from the trip back,” I say. “Not feverish. I have some indigestion. It’s nothing, Moder. Don’t worry.”

  But she is worrying, and I feel a tinge of satisfaction in seeing this. A tinge of relief. This is mother-love. This is my mother’s love.

  “Maybe I’m contagious,” she says. “It’s spreading from me….”

  “No,” I say.

  “Or an imprecation…”

  “What are you talking about, Moder?”

  “You’re in pain?” she says.

  “No, Moder. I’m not sick. Come. Come inside.”

  We walk again. Creep again. Our neighbor pushes his chair back just before we step from his sight; then he rolls himself to a side window of his house where he can see us trudge through our backyard, this landscape of doll-size peaks and valleys and muddy rivers, still sodden from yesterday’s rain. The yard looks like the ceiling of my bedroom to me, where the cracking plaster forms similar mountains, where rain often slips through the roof and streams momentarily before dripping to the floor.

  “Cursed beast,” Mother says now, but not to the old man, not to me. She is looking at the oak tree that stands leafless near the house, its branches too still, too peaceful. Last season the oak’s leaves fell early; this season its leaves didn’t grow back. I’d loved this tree when I was a child: the tree had been wild-looking then, its emerald leaves jittery. I remember longing to climb it; I imagined sneaking outside, wrapping my small body against its grain, mounting higher and higher.

  Mother spits again; this time she hits the tree, and cusses, “En skefuld lort.” But I see the tree meant something to her, too. There’s a tenderness in her voice despite her words, a fullness in her eyes. “What are you looking at?” she says to me, and her knotted hand swipes her vacant cheek, seems to vanish there. “Just get yourself inside.”

  She’s weeping, I think. It feels like a caterpillar is slinking up the nape of my neck, and another layer crusts across the mystery that is my mother.

  “I’m just waiting for you,” I say, and I try to help her up the stairs, but she swats at me, shoos me away.

  We enter through the back door, onto the back porch, where I’ll sort and spread the jimsonweed. But first I’ll separate out the salsify and goatsbeard for dinner. I expect Mother to move inside, settle in, but she remains still, staring at the jimsonweed.

  “You want me to prepare it now?” I say, setting down the roots and leaves. “The jimsonweed?”

  Mother looks from the weed to me. She shifts from her stronger leg to her weaker, winces, shifts back. She slumps against the counter, props herself there. Mother’s changing before my eyes: she’s growing so deformed, she’s becoming something new.

  “Lay it out to dry,” she begins, but she stops herself. She can see in my eyes I know what to do: I saw what she’d done with the jimsonweed for months.

  She leaves me, then; she turns and heads inside. But she doesn’t pump water, wash in the porch sink, as she always does after we forage. And she forgets to remove her shoes. Mud from the backyard, still fresh, slips from her soles in purplish green smears. Her hands curl, but her arms hang open and limp. She walks hunching, as if her own weight’s too much. I recall years and years back, to a time when Mother didn’t hunch, when she towered above me like the goddess Artemis: proud and cruel, but still my protector.

  “I’ll bring up your dinner,” I say. “And the adder’s eyes. As soon as I finish here.” I want to stop her, remove her shoes, help her wash. “And shinleaf,” I say. “I’ll make the paste.”

  I expect Mother to call back, remind me she doesn’t want the adder’s eyes, she doesn’t want the paste. But she is silent as she climbs the stairs. One step, she waits. Another. She waits. She doesn’t know I’m watching; she wouldn’t want me to see her like this, and yet I can’t turn away. I want to go to her, take her bony elbow in my palm, lift her like I did the hairstreak.

  “Moder,” I call to her. “What about the nightshade? You want those berries?” I’m surprised to hear myself offer this. They are poisonous, the berries; they won’t help her.

  “Are you trying to poison me, Aslaug Datter?” she calls back. “I told you, I gathered those berries to ward off your witchcraft.”

  Although Mother studies religious texts—the Torah and the Kabbalah, the Koran and the
Bible, the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita, and Vedic writings and Tantric writings—as if each separate one were the key to our salvation, she claims she’s an atheist. No gods. No spirits. No divine anything. No evil. And no witchcraft. But why does she scour these texts, then, searching for some illumination, some epiphany, some treasure buried beneath the yellow-oil glow of our claw-foot lamp? And why does she forbid my looking at the texts, except when she’s teaching me languages? Is it because she knows I’ll find answers there that will make her less divine to me, empower me to leave her? Or is it because she’s protecting me from the realization that there are no answers, even there?

  SOLOMON’S SEAL

  2007

  —Cross-examination?

  —Yes. Yes, Your Honor. Mr. Grumset, you live alone, isn’t that right?

  —Uh-huh.

  —Please answer yes or no.

  —Yes.

  —You’ve lived alone since your wife died eighteen years ago, correct?

  —Yes.

  —And you’ve been confined to a wheelchair for approximately twenty years, correct?

  —Yes.

  —You’ve rarely received visitors since your wife’s death, right?

  —A nurse comes to the house a couple times a week, and I get groceries delivered, and I get those damn sales-people and Jehovah’s Witnesses.

  —But no one else visits you regularly, is that right?

  —That’s right.

  —In fact, no one else has visited you for years, correct?

  —I don’t know about that.

  —When was the last time someone other than your nurse, a delivery person or a solicitor visited you at your house?

  —I don’t remember.

  —Mr. Grumset, you mentioned you have groceries delivered to your house. In fact, since your wife died, you’ve had Soren’s Grocery deliver supplies to your house once per week because you can’t drive, isn’t that right?

  —Objection, Your Honor. What is the relevance of this?

  —The objection is overruled for now, but please get to the point, Counsel. You may answer the question, Mr. Grumset.

  —Yes.

  —Isn’t it true that Soren’s Grocery has delivered a fifth of gin and a fifth of whiskey to you every week—every single week—for the past eighteen years?

  —Objection, Your Honor. Mr. Grumset is not on trial here.

  —But his credibility as a witness is, Your Honor.

  —Objection overruled. Answer the question.

  —How do you know that?

  —Please just answer the question.

  —I don’t remember eighteen years ago.

  —Do you remember even one week during the past eighteen years when Soren’s didn’t deliver two fifths of hard alcohol to your house?

  —I don’t remember.

  —And that would include the week when Maren Hellig died, isn’t that right?

  —Objection. Argumentative.

  —Overruled.

  —I don’t remember.

  —Thank you, Mr. Grumset. I have no further questions, Your Honor.

  DAYLILY

  2003

  I untangle the crumpled roots from my pocket, stash them beneath the kitchen sink in the basket of soapwort leaves. Then I pump enough water for Mother to wash and pour it into a pot. Before I heat the water, I scoop out a jar for my meadowsweet, lower the stems into the water, then hide the jar under the sink. Next I heat the water, carry it upstairs and leave it in the bathroom, knowing Mother will see it there. And I head back down to the jimsonweed.

  I separate the leaves and seeds and spread them to dry. Then I prepare the adder’s eyes tincture, diluting alcohol and mixing it with the plant’s fresh leaves. I make the shinleaf plaster and start dinner, before I sort and store the remaining plants. It’s close to nine by the time I walk upstairs with a tray for Mother, and I wonder what to do if she’s asleep, knowing this is a possibility, although it’s never happened before. Knowing she’s especially unwell. Should I wake her if she’s sleeping? Encourage her to eat? Or should I steal the chance to open the bloodroot, paint the hairstreak on me?

  I reach the hallway; her door is open. I knock my foot against the doorframe, but barely; she doesn’t answer. When I look inside, she’s not there. I feel the weight of her in me, the weight of knowing I’ve no option of escaping her: she’s awake. She must be in the bathroom, washing with the water I left for her, and rubbing her skin as she does each night with the bilelike sap of the celandine plant—the plant Mother calls her wartwort. It fades freckles, she claims; eliminates warts. But when I turn, I see her emerge from the green room, the room she refers to as our guest room—although we’ve never had guests. Mother stops when she sees me; she stops like she’s been stopped. I know right then: there’s something in that room, something she does not want me to see.

  I’ve often stood in the green room and peered at the twin bed, the small green sofa, imagining someone visiting us, staying there in that room. Someone who might steal me away. The room’s furnishings had always seemed illusory to me—as illusory as guests. Not now. Now my mind traverses each piece.

  Is she hiding another book like she hid The Scarlet Letter? I wonder. That book was on my recommended reading list from the state, yet it never materialized. Never, that is, until I was changing the sheets on Mother’s bed and, as I tucked, I struck it, mashed beneath her mattress and dog-eared. I realized she was reading it at night, behind her closed door. And none of the passages were blacked out.

  I waited then, from Thursday to Sunday, until the hour of her bath. And I read. And I read again the following Wednesday as she bathed, and again the following Sunday. And I learned of Hester Prynne and Pearl and Reverend Dimmesdale and Chillingworth. And I found Mother in Hester Prynne, and Pearl in myself. But who, I wondered, is Dimmesdale? And now I wonder, Will this secret of hers in the green room reveal our Dimmesdale?

  “Dinner’s ready,” I say. I try to steel my expression, to not let her read what I know. “I boiled the goatsbeard and salsify roots.”

  Mother lifts her hands and attaches her bent fingers like vines to the tray. She limps into her room but manages to turn toward me before she bumps her door shut. “Most of our universe is made up of dark matter, Aslaug.” She speaks in a near whisper; she pants out the words. “No one knows what it is.” I want to stop her, tell her I know about dark matter, she doesn’t need to teach me right now. “You are not alone in that, you see?”

  “It’s okay, Moder,” I say. She sways, the tray rocks; I fear she might fall. “Let me help you into your room. You should eat your dinner. Rest.”

  “But the old outhouse,” she says, referring to the red shed we’ve never used that sits invisible at the rear of the property, overgrown and reeking with the rotting-carcass stink of the thorny carrion vine, and encircled in summer with metallic blowflies and flesh flies and midges. “There’s a crack in the ceiling. The boards are loose.”

  “It doesn’t matter, Moder,” I say, but it does matter, I think: something’s wrong, now, with her mind. “We don’t use the outhouse—”

  “You need to go there,” she says. “Find it. It’s hard to find.”

  I say, “It’s overgrown, I know, but it doesn’t matter—”

  “You’ll find it, won’t you? And the ceiling, the crack in the ceiling. The boards—”

  “I’ll fix the ceiling, Moder. Don’t worry.”

  I try to take the tray from her, but she pulls it back. “Why would you do that?” she says.

  “I’m just trying to help, Moder. Carry the tray for you.”

  She shakes her head, leans into the doorway. I imagine her slipping into the narrow seams of the doorframe, disappearing there. “You are good to your mother, Aslaug Datter. My daughter. You have always been good to your mother,” she says, and the door bangs closed. I stand there, looking at the door to her room, the door to the green room. I want to go into her room, show her I can be good—that I want to be good to
her, even though I hate her at times. But I want to go into the green room more.

  She’s tired, I tell myself. We foraged the whole day. In the morning her mind will be fine. As fine as Mother’s mind can be.

  I walk down the stairs, letting my feet fall with weight, so Mother will hear my descent. I enter the kitchen; I have to force myself, now, to eat the greens, the roots. When I finish, I pump water and pour half into the sink; half I heat on the stove. I wash the dishes, clanging them together, then I carry the warmed water up the stairs, into the bathroom. I empty the water into the tub, holding the pot high as I pour, so the sound of the splashing water carries to Mother. And I wash myself, slowly: my hair and nails and neck and ankles, once and again. All is normal, Mother, I’m trying to say. I’m in no hurry, Mother.

  I towel off and dress, then I enter my bedroom, pull hard on the door; I want Mother to know I’m in my room, the door is closed. I climb into bed and push hard on the squealing springs. Then I lie quiet. And listen. I’m not surprised Mother isn’t asleep: I hear her comforter rumple, her body settle. She’s waiting for me to sleep; I expected this. So I pretend. I pass a half hour in silence before I hear her blow out her candle, watch the crack of dim light disappear. Gradually her breathing transforms from barely audible to audibly crisp.

  Then I slip to the floor, to my knees, hands, stomach: I try to disperse my weight, hinder the creaking boards. I crawl down the hall like an insect; grit from the floor clings to my palms like pollen. I reach the green room, but I fear lighting a candle even though I’ve shut the door; I fear Mother might wake, notice the stealing tint of white light, so I search first in darkness, but my hands alone unearth nothing.

  I strike a match and light a candle, and another, and another, until the room is almost bright, then I search with a fastidiousness that makes little sense. What do I think I might find? What epiphany could be tucked in the crevices of the sofa, the thick folds of the quilt? I look for close to fifteen minutes before I notice the framed poster of Tivoli: it depicts the Danish amusement park at night, from a distance, the city of Copenhagen sparkling around it. The poster has always been in this room, on this wall—as far back as I can remember. But now the poster hangs askew. I reach up and lift the frame from the wall, and I see Mother’s secret just hanging there, no longer hidden by Tivoli.